How to: VMWare ESXi5 Local Disk RAW Mapping

This is the process to allow virtual machines on a host direct access to the local disks of the host if not currently used as datastores or assigned to other VM’s.

1. On your VM host create a folder in the local datastore for the .vmdk files you need to create later. These are not actual .vmdk files and will act as a proxy/redirect to the RAW disk access. I created the following datastore1 > Symb_Disks